22 places. Root never wearied of holding forth on the valley which had been "the pathway of empire. . . along which dragged the weary way of the wagons that peopled the Great West." The rumble of their wheels had barely faded into history when he was a boy. He seems to have had a happy childhood; in any event, he became so convinced of its bliss in later years that he reached unprecedented heights of oratory in de- scribing it. "How sweet the girls we remem- ber!" he burst out in a speech extolling the valley. "How loud the shouts of merry youth! How sings the skate! How swift speeds the sled! How happy were the days we have left behind us! How happy the memories that we treas- ure for our old age!" How hard, on the other hand, must Elihu Root have worked! How devoted must he have been to his books! How little time can he have had for girls or sled or skates! He entered Hamilton College when he had just turned six- teen. His only extracurricular activity was as president of the College Baseball Association. He won a mathematics prize and competed unsuccessfully in an oratorical contest with a speech called "The Jew of Dickens, Scott, and Shakespeare." Life was definitely earn- est. A professorial family was necessarily less than affluent, so Elihu had to earn most of the money for law school. He did this by teaching at Rome, New York, for a year. In 1865 he enrolled at the New York University Law School. Again, he did little except work. He devised a variety of blanket-bath- robe in which he would sit while at his books. When his eyes could stand no more, he would blowout hIs lamp, roll over onto a couch, and sleep until morn- ing came and he could study again. He earned what money he could, principal- ly by tutoring; for a time he lived on fifty cents a day . Young Root's outstanding characteristic was thoroughness. All except three of his classmates, for example, applied for admission to the bar after their first year in the law school and were promptly accept- ed. But Root remained for a second year, and received his degree in 1867. The pattern of the early years is quite typical. Root had a hard time finding clients. He served well the ones whom he found. They discovered that he was able. He also revealed marked ability for negotiating settlements out of court, and, little by little, his prac- tice grew. By 1878 he had prospered enough-the Tweed case undoubtedly helped-to be married to Clara Wales, daughter of Salem H. Wales, who was co-publisher of the Scientific Ameri- can and a gentleman of substance in New York. At about this time, as though to atone for his defence of Tweed, Root identified himself with reform politics. In 1879 he entered a three-cornered race for Judge of the Common Pleas Court, the only occa- sion on which he ever campaigned for office. Root's father-in-law, Mr. Wales, was on a committee of the Municipal Society, which passed on the Tammany, the anti-Tammany, and the Republican aspirants. But despite this family con- nection, Root, the Republican, was not singled out for favor. The committee merely ruled that all three were "satis- factory," and he lost by a few thousand votes out of the 150,000 ballots cast. Two men, as different in type as men can be, began to influence Root's life at this time. The first was Chester A. Arthur, a routine politician who ulti- mately astonished everyone by his in- dependence when the assassination of Garfield catapulted him into the White House. The second was Theodore Roosevelt, who had been graduated from Harvard College in 1880, and was announcing, in his peculiar Cam- bridge drawl, that he desired to become "a member of the governing class." Arthur, prior to his nomination for Vice-President in 1880, had been a Republican politico in New York. Root had been in trod uced to him soon after leaving law school. He was won by Arthur's charm and gradually became one of his trusted lieutenants. Just be- fore midnight on September 19th, 1881, word reached the home of Vice-Presi- dent Arthur on Lexington Avenue that President Garfield was dead. He must take the oath of office at once. So Elihu Root, who had been waiting for the tragic news, careened off in a cab to find some jurist who could perform this function. He returned with Justice John R. Brady of the New York Su- preme Court. He stood in sil- ence with a small group while Arthur pronounced the solemn words of the oath. Far more vital in Root's life-from 1 90 1 on, at least-was Roosevelt. "He was the most advisable man I ever knew," said Elihu Root in one tribute, certainly unique among all the charac- terizations that Roosevelt ever received. It may be assumed that Root did not mean this too literally; it was spoken FEßRI1ARY 8, 1 5> 3 " soon after the Rough Rider's death, in January, 1919, and sorrow influenced the eulogist. A more accurate judgment was offered in 1905. Root was among the guests at a dinner in Roosevelt's honor. One of the speakers, an old New Yorker, described a visit to the Roose- velt home on Twentieth Street soon after Theodore was born, in October, 1858. He told how the infant had been placed in his arms. At this point, Root looked up. "Was he hard to hold? " he asked. In the fall of 1881, Roosevelt was Republican candidate for the State Legislature from the Twenty-first Assembly District. Root, a resident: of the district, was a minor influence in the resulting victory. Five years later he performed a less valuable service for his rising young friend when he per- suaded Roosevelt to become the Re- publican candidate for Mayor of New York. Henry George, the Single Tax- er, was running independently. Abram S. Hewitt had been reluctantly nomi- nated by a still chastened Tammany. Hewitt was in every way an admirable candidate; Roosevelt was not really needed for reform purposes, and he came in third. The campaign was a serious setback to his political aspirations, and he retired, for a time, to literary pursuits. Root probably did not regard this as much of a loss to N ew York or the nation. He did not fully appreciate Roosevelt until he succeeded McKinley in the White House. Root was in Buf- falo on September 14th, 1901, when the new President swore fealty to the Con- stitution, and for nearly eight years he was his constant councillor, guide, and friend. But Root, a very short time before, had been scornfully amused. In the early months of 1900, Governor Roosevelt of New York had been loudly protest- ing that he would not retire to the graveyard of the Vice-Presidency. In Washington, on a visit, he held forth to Secretary of War Root on the dis- astrous consequences of nomination for that post. He hoped that the nomination would not be forced on him. "Of course not!" said Root, and smiled frigidly. "Of course not. You're not qualified for it!" OT'S own public services, mean- while, were spasmodic. He served as United States Attorney for New York between 1883 and 1885 at the request of President Arthur. His real interest, though, was his law. The eighties were remunerative years for an